


Time Enough

by zeldadestry



Category: Supernatural, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:20:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is John Connor’s world, the Winchesters just live in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silk_knickers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silk_knickers/gifts).



> Dear silk_knickers, I read on yr lj user info that you enjoy crossovers and SPN...so this happened!

Dean ate nothing but junk food before J-Day, and there was little but processed food available afterwards, but now that they’re back in the green and growing world, he’s become completely obsessed with fresh produce. “Oh my god,” he moans around the cherries in his mouth. “These are so friggin sweet, you gotta try one.”

Sam snickers. “Dude, you’re such a freak.” He reaches out and grabs a handful from the bowl resting on Dean’s thighs. Dean punches his shoulder. “What?”

“I said try one, you greedy bastard.” Sam flips him off, eats the cherries one at a time from his cupped hand until they’re gone. By the time he’s finished, Dean’s already abandoned the bowl on the kitchen table and moved on to devouring the rest of his purchases from the farmers’ market. “You know,” he says, “there’s lots of things about technology that piss me off.”

“Like a blood-thirsty, megalomaniacal A.I. and its time traveling killer robots?”

“Exactly! On the other hand, we’ve got the plucot.” Dean holds up his half eaten piece of fruit for Sam’s examination. Although he shivers when Sam bends over him to lap away the trail of juice running down his forearm, it doesn’t shut him up for long. “It’s fifty percent plum, fifty percent apricot, and 100 percent awesome.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but hybridization of fruit trees has been going on for hundreds of years.”

Dean takes a moment to ponder. “So there could hypothetically be a universe with plenty of plucots but no Terminators?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.” Dean’s eyes glaze over. “I wanna live there.”

 

They arrive at the Connor’s on a Saturday morning, Dean carrying the hard drive containing all the information they’ve collected in the past year.

Cameron’s standing at the top of the stairs and, when Sam moves to pass by her, she lifts up a hand and rests it against his chest. “I need to talk to you,” she says.

Dean looks back, showing off a raised eyebrow and a “So, would you ever fuck a hot robot, Sammy?” smirk. Sam waves him away, and Dean greets Sarah at the door and walks inside with her.

Sam meets Cameron’s eyes. “What’s up?”

“We talked, in the future.”

“I remember.”

“You like talking to me.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Most people don’t. I make them uncomfortable.”

Sam watches her closely. The flickers of emotion in her eyes and the occasional waver of her voice have always fascinated him. He knows he’s supposed to despise all the ways she falls short of being human, but instead he’s amazed by the moments when he recognizes her as an individual, a person. “Does that bother you?”

“That you talk to me?”

“What? No. That you make other people uncomfortable.”

“No.” She looks down at her right arm and makes a fist. “Humans should be scared of me. I’m dangerous.”

“Everyone is.” Sam shrugs. “Everyone has the potential within them for violence.”

“Yes.” She grabs hold of his wrist and sits down on the top stair, tugging at his arm until he joins her. “Tell me. Why do good humans sometimes do bad things?”

“Original sin.”

Her forehead crinkles. “I’m not interested in a theological discussion.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. I was teasing you, because it’s a complicated question and original sin’s just one of the concepts people have come up with to try and simplify the answer. People are flawed, Cameron, all people. Even the good ones, whatever that means, are. We all make mistakes.”

“But why?”

“Well, I think people often don’t realize that what they’re doing is going to have an unfortunate result.”

“Humans are bad at making predictions.”

“Yeah. And then there are all the times when people don’t even stop to consider the consequences of their actions.”

“Humans are reckless and impulsive.”

“They can be. And then there are times when people choose to ignore or overrule all the doubts and warnings of others. The drive to assert one’s own independence is like any other, it can be expressed through both constructive and destructive means. And then there’s the whole prisoner of fate angle. Sometimes people feel trapped and they’ll do anything, crazy things, just to prove they’re not a puppet, that what they do matters, makes a difference, even if it’s a bad one.” Cameron is unnaturally still beside him, no blinking, no breathing, never fidgeting. He’s not even sure she’s listening. “What’s got you thinking about all this?”

“You haven’t listed all the reasons.” The fingers of her right hand twitch, startling him. Was it a glitch? She’s not - she can’t possibly be nervous, can she?

“Alright, help me out, then. What else?”

“Sometimes a person might undertake an action they never would otherwise because they’re trying to save someone they care about.”

“You’re probably right.”

Cameron leans over and rests a heavy hand on his knee. “Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not a bad person.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Her fingers twitch again, squeezing around his kneecap hard enough to hurt. “But you’re going to do bad things.”

His first impulse is to tell her that she’s wrong, that she doesn’t understand him, or his motivations. Following behind the rejection, though, is curiosity. What actions would a Terminator consider to be bad? “What kind of things?”

“You’re going to help Skynet. You’re going to give them information that could harm John.”

Ok, that’s just, that’s just fucking ridiculous. He spent his whole life before Judgment Day hunting Terminators and all his life since trying to take down Skynet. “That makes no sense. Why would I ever do that?”

“For Dean.”

Sam suddenly wants to hit her. He knows it’s not a secret that he’d do anything for Dean, but it still feels like she’s dragging something into the open that doesn’t belong to her, that no one but Sam even has a right to look at. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He disappeared, in the future, before John sent me back here.”

Sam swallows, tastes bile at the back of his throat. “What the hell do you mean he disappeared?”

“He went out on a mission and he never returned.”

“He -” Sam doesn’t want to say the word, but Cameron has no skill at anticipating what upsets him and he can’t rely on her to finish his thought for him. “He died?”

“I don’t know. Declared MIA.” She studies him dispassionately. “I’ve read that for many survivors that’s more painful. They’re relieved when the body’s finally found. Do you think that’s true?”

“I feel sick.”

“Why?” Her next words stabs him with precision. “Because you just found out you’re a traitor, or because you’re going to lose Dean? Which one is it?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

She lifts her hand from his knee and curls it loosely around his throat. “I asked you a question and I want you to answer it.”

“It’s both, ok? It’s both.”

“I don’t believe you. You betrayed John. You’re a threat.” She begins to fractionally increase the pressure of her grip and Sam wonders just how slowly she could strangle him, if she wanted it to last. “I should kill you. I should kill you now.”

“So what’s stopping you?” he rasps.

“Future John.” Saying that stays her hand and she draws it away.

Sam drags shaking fingers through her hair, circles them over the spot where her chip is lodged, wondering if it’s a loophole in her programming, or something else, that renders her capable of mercy. “Why?”

“Because I asked him if I should, before he sent me back here but after you returned from here. He told me no.”

Sam’s hand drops away from her. There’s no mystery, after all, she’s still nothing but a slave to her SOP. “So you’re just following orders.”

“Yes.” She stands and walks to the front door, but turns back to tell him, “He forgives you, but I don’t.”

She slams the door behind her before he gets the chance to ask her what she even thinks forgiveness means.

 

Sam would have been perfectly happy to pass the ride from the Connor’s to their apartment in silence, but Dean’s already planning ahead. “So I was thinking we leave Monday morning, head up the coast, and spend a few days in Frisco-”

“No one calls it that, you sound like an idiot.”

Dean rolls down the window, sticks his head out, and howls, “Frisco!” Sam grabs his arm and jerks him back into the car. “Genius idea, right? Give ourselves a little vacation - we earned it, man, got John every single scrap of information he asked for - before we go back.” He frowns. “Wait. Is it going back or jumping forward? I can never figure it out.”

“It’s both,” Sam snaps, because what the hell does what they call it matter? “We’re jumping forward in time, but we’re returning to the point we first traveled back from.”

“Dude, get psyched. The views we’ll see, driving up highway one? It’s gonna be sweet.”

“Yeah, great,” Sam grits out. The time displacement equipment they’re supposed to use is stashed in an underground bunker near the Presideo. Sam figures no one in history has ever been more depressed about a trip to the Bay Area than he is right now. “Pull over.”

“What?”

“I said pull over!”

Dean obeys. “What’s your problem?”

“Nothing.” Sam opens the car door. “I don’t feel so good. I’m gonna walk the rest of the way home, clear my head.”

“You getting sick or something?” Dean slides over and presses a palm against Sam’s forehead. Sam pushes him away and tells himself he’s imagining the hurt that flashes across Dean’s face. He gets out of the car and Dean moves back into the driver’s seat. “Whatever, I’m not gonna beg you to stay,” he grumbles. “Try not to get run over.”

“I’ll see you at home,” Sam promises.

When Sam gets back, Dean’s slouched on the couch in front of the TV, cackling maniacally at “BASEketball”, that movie starring the South Park guys.

“It’s not that funny,” Sam says.

“Yeah, dude, it really is. Don’t be a buzzkill.” Dean pats the couch cushion beside the one he’s lounging on. “Have a seat, expand your cultural horizons.”

Sam snorts. “I’m gonna lie down,” he says, once Dean’s turned his attention back to the television.

“You ok?”

“Yeah, just, you know, my head kinda hurts.”

“A six mile walk in the smog will do that to you, ya moron.”

Sam has to concede the point.

Dean appears in the doorway of their bedroom ten minutes later and Sam watches as he strips down to his boxers. “Is the movie over already?” he asks.

Dean shrugs. “I’ve seen it before.”

Sam lifts up the sheet covering his lower body and makes a show of peeking underneath it. “I’m pretty sure you’ve seen all this before, too.”

“Some things just get better the more I watch them.” Dean licks his lips. “And taste them.”

Sam thinks Dean expects him to smile or laugh or make some kind of response, but all he can manage is staring bleakly into space, wondering why the hell no one in his life has ever, not once, had good news for him about the future. “I’ll take your word for it,” he finally says, just to say something.

“You look kinda queasy,” Dean says, pulling back the covers on his side of the bed. “If I get in here with you, I’m not gonna end up covered in puke, am I?”

Sam ignores him, slides down so he’s flat on his back and closes his eyes. He wants to turn away from Dean, hide, but there’s no quicker way to signal that something’s wrong. He feels Dean shifting closer to him, waits for a touch he more than wants, and maybe that’s his problem. Desire’s powerful, but craving? That’s a whole other level of intensity. “It was weird,” he says, “talking to the metal.”

“What? Cameron? I thought you two were buddies. Did she say something?”

Sam decides to ignore the question for now. “It’s just, going over there is good, ok, but it’s always so weird. I mean, I still can’t get used to seeing John Connor as a kid. Major cognitive dissonance.”

“What a pretentious fucking way to say that something’s wacky.”

“Fucking pretentious way.”

“Fuckin snob,” Dean teases, leaning over Sam and flicking a finger at the tip of his nose.

Sam’s lips part, but Dean doesn’t bend down to kiss them. Instead he nudges Sam with his hands until he’s lying on his side and then curls up behind him. Sam’s gotten so used to all the time they have here, used to clothes worked off piece by piece, skin revealed inch by inch, until their whole bodies are naked. “If we go back, we won’t have this.”

“Don’t say that.” Dean bites down hard on Sam’s shoulder. “We’ll always have this.”

Sam blinks, tries to gauge if there’s any possible way he can explain to Dean that no, they fucking won’t, without freaking out. “I just meant - we won’t have all this time.”

“So what? Quick and dirty is always more fun.”

Sam remembers all the years spent sleeping on cots in barracks, grabbing for each other in burned out buildings, wrapped around each other in abandoned tunnels. He remembers air so polluted their lungs never stopped aching, grime on their skin that wouldn’t wash off, ears always ringing because of the grinding of machines and the endless screaming of survivors, screaming for help, screaming in pain, screaming because they just couldn’t take it anymore. And here they are today, with clean skin, washed hair, and brushed teeth, lying on a bed with sheets that smell like fabric softener, as sunlight streams in through the windows. But it’s not, Sam knows, the contrast between then and now that makes the moment so fucking perfect. What matters is just being beside Dean. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Sam murmurs.

Dean groans. “Sammy, no one’s dying, ok? Stop it with that shit.”

Sam decides to press the point. “If something happened to me, what do you think, I mean, how would you take it?”

“Long as I’m here, nothing’s going to happen. Have a little more respect for the man who got you through J-Day a-ok, will you?”

“Please, Dean, just - answer me.”

“This is stupid.”

“Please?”

“If something happened to you - I wouldn’t take it so well.”

“Meaning?”

“I’d probably lose my mind a little.”

“Yeah? A little?”

“God, you’re pushy. How about totally and completely, ok? That enough drama for you?”

“You know it’d be the same for me, right?”

“Nah, come on, Sammy. It’d take you a little while to get your shit together, I’ll give you that, but you’d make it through. You’d be stronger on the other side.”

“You’re wrong,” Sam says, and wonders how he can make Dean believe that.

 

“Man,” Dean says, licking salsa off his thumb, “but I am gonna miss this.”

Sam looks down at stained napkins and crumpled tin foil, the remains of take-out from their favorite taqueria. No time like the present, right? “You don’t have to.”

Dean points an accusing finger at him. “Don’t you even start.

“I don’t think we should go back.”

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

“Why? Because you know I’m right?”

“You know, I thought you might be a whiny pain in my ass about this, but can’t you at least wait to start this shit until after I’ve finished my lunch?”

“Please, like anything would slow your appetite.”

Dean grunts in acknowledgment and starts in on his seventh and final taco. Sam waits until he’s done with it and his Pacifico Clara beer before trying again. “We’re not metal, you know. We don’t have to do this just because it’s what we were told to do.”

“Damn it, Sam.” Dean gets up from the table and glares down at him. “You know better than this. What kind of people would we be, huh, if, knowing all the shit we know, we ignored it? What, you think I’m a quitter? You think I’m the kind of guy who just gives up?”

“Of course not, will you stop shouting at me!”

“Well, you’re shouting, too.”

“Because you are, Dean! If you wouldn’t shout, I wouldn’t either.”

“What is this, monkey see monkey do? In that case, I’m not quitting and neither are you.”

“We can work here, too, you know.” Sam has thought it through obsessively. “Why is it any more noble to fight the war in the future than it is to stay here and try to prevent it from ever happening? Isn’t stopping J-Day what everyone really wants, anyway?

“We have orders.”

“I don’t care.” Sam stands up so quickly he knocks his chair over. “I know you don’t wanna go back, either,” he says, advancing on Dean. “I know you want to stay.”

“What I want?” Dean takes a step back, and now all Sam has to do is lean in and put an arm on either side of him to pin him against the counter. “Christ.” Dean’s voice quiets because they’re so close together and that just makes Sam feel worse. It’s actually easier to deal with the yelling, which keeps Sam angry and on the defense, than with the defeated slump. “What the fuck does what I want have to do with anything? When has anything ever gone a certain way just because I wanted it to?”

There’s no way around it, Sam could point out every single advantage they have here, but none of that’s going to sway Dean, and he knew it wouldn’t when he started. He just had to try, because all he has going forward is the truth about why he’s scared, about what a fuck up he is, or will be, or whatever, and he’s put off admitting it for as long as he could. “You need to listen to me and stop trying to pretend like everything’s going to be ok just because you say so. If we go back, something bad is gonna happen to you.”

“The metal told you something, didn’t she? What the hell did she say?”

“She said,” he chokes it out, best he can, “that you disappear. You go out on a mission and you don’t come back.”

“Ok. Professional hazard, nothing we both don’t already know. So I bite it. Big deal, you’ll get over it.”

“Shut up, you asshole.”

“Look, I don’t like it any more than you do, but we both know that was probably always the way it was gonna end. You’re too smart to expect anything different.”

“You’re wrong. I’m going to lose it. That’s what Cameron wanted to tell me yesterday.”

“Lose it? How?”

“Cameron said I betrayed, I will betray? Fuck, I don’t know, but I’m a traitor, a traitor to John, to the resistance. She said I snitched to Skynet.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they take you, hold you prisoner again, and this time I can’t get to you, rescue you. And then they offer me a deal and I agree so they’ll let you go. Maybe I snap, maybe I want revenge because you died on John’s mission, and I just don’t care anymore. Maybe they, I mean, look at Cameron, she looks just like Allison, we both know that, she can even act like Allison, I’ve seen it, and you wouldn’t even, I mean, if I saw them side by side I’d be able to tell the difference, yeah, but when it’s just Cameron, she could be Allison. Maybe they offer me a robot you, or something?”

Dean busts out laughing. “You sick fuck.”

“This is serious!”

“Hey, as soon as you mentioned your custom made mandroid? It became insane.” Sam turns his face away and Dean’s voice is gentler when he speaks again. “Look, I know you’re freaked out, but she’s - you can’t trust the metal, Sam.”

“I know her.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t. She’s not a person, not like you think she is.”

“She wasn’t lying.”

“Even if you’re right about that, we’re all messing with the timeline by being here. Just because something happened in her future doesn’t mean it has to happen in ours.”

“Yeah, so you wanna take the risk? I don’t. I won’t.”

“If we stay, we’re probably gonna see Judgment Day again, did you think of that? We might not survive it this time. And even if we did, how the fuck could you want to live through it twice?”

“Just- tell me you’ll think about it?” He hugs Dean, holds him close, wraps a hand around the back of his head. “Think about it?”

Dean sighs. “Alright, Sam. I’ll think about it, ok?” He puts both his hands against Sam’s chest and pushes. “Back off for now.” Sam doesn’t move. “I said back off!” Sam sulks but lets go and steps aside. Dean walks past him and grabs the car keys off the kitchen table. “I need - I’m going for a drive.” He picks up his wallet, but not his phone.

“Your cell,” Sam says.

Dean shakes his head. “Leave me alone for a while, I mean it.”

“Dean.”

“Saaaaaaam,” Dean says, in an exaggerated whine. “I didn’t throw a shit fit when you wanted to walk home yesterday, so why don’t you give me a break?”

“Whatever. Go. I don’t care.”

“Liar. Like hell you don’t.”

 

Dean’s favorite bar is in San Pedro, of all places. It’s like Bukowski said when he lived there, no one bothers anyone else. As soon as Dean’s eyes adjust to the dim light inside, he spots Derek, just as he’d hoped.

Dean’s first response to seeing Derek is always a shiver, because he’ll never be able to forget how cold it was in the room where the Terminator imprisoned them. At least they’d been tied up back to back, which gave them some heat to share. “Gonna get frickin frostbite in here,” Dean complained, after he’d regained consciousness.

“I just hope we’ll be dead soon,” Derek said.

“No offense, Captain Sunshine, but I’m aiming to get out of here in one piece.”

“Yeah? No one’s gonna risk themselves for us, it would compromise everything. We’re bait, Dean, don’t you get it? In this situation, the only favorable outcome is our death.”

“They’re not going to leave us here.”

“They better,” Derek countered. “What do you want? You want to give the metal what it wants? You want John to put together a suicidal rescue attempt, because I sure as fuck don’t. All I want is to make sure the tincans don’t get what they’re aiming for and if that means I gotta die, alright, so be it.”

“I know! I know that, but I also know that if the situation were reversed, if it was Sam locked up in here, I wouldn’t think twice. I’d do anything, try anything, to get him free. And you know, I know you do, that Kyle would have done the same for you.”

It wasn’t until days later, after they’d both been released from medical, that Derek said, “You’re right. Kyle would have done the same for me.”

Derek’s sitting alone in a corner booth, and Dean slides in across from him. He’s got whiskey in front of him, instead of his usual beer, and Dean figures they must both have had shitty days so far. They bump fists, but don’t say anything until after Dean’s ordered and downed his own whiskey. “Derek.”

“Yeah.”

“How long are you supposed to stay here?”

Derek rubs at a jagged scar on his forearm. “John never said. I think he sent me to be his soldier here for as long as I live. I’d say I’m stationed here until I die.”

“John told us to come back after we’d finished our assignment.”

“Have you finished?”

“Yeah, we’re done.”

“So why didn’t you say good bye the other day?”

“No good at it.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Derek pushes against the front of Dean’s boot with his own. “You’re having second thoughts.”

Dean shakes his head. “Not like you mean. Not because it’s better here.”

“Then why?”

“Cameron. She said something to Sam, something about the future, something I think it would be better, not just for Sam, but for John, too, to avoid.”

Derek’s eyes are fierce. “Better for John if you stay?”

“Yeah.”

“But John told you to return?”

“Yeah.” Dean lets out a long exhale. “I take it you see the problem.”

“Shit,” Derek says, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. Marty didn’t always follow John’s orders. Hell, Kyle didn’t either. I didn’t judge them for it.”

“Yeah, but, you and me, we’re different. That’s why John counts on us, man.”

“Which John?” Derek frowns. “The John Connor I saw today? You’re absolutely right. The John Connor who locks himself away and sends metal to communicate with his people? I don’t know.”

“He’s still John Connor and he gave me an order.”

“You are so screwed if you’re asking me for some kind of absolution. I knew a priest after Judgment Day, he used to say those of us who lived were the damned. We’d tell him to shut up but he kept saying it, every day, until he killed himself.”

“Think he was right?”

“No. Well, he was right about one thing. We are damned, because we’re all going to die. Even if we stop Skynet, even if we win the war and save human beings from extinction, all of us are going to die. Today, tomorrow, soon, later, I don’t know. So you better know why you do what you do. Marty used to give me shit about how I was the perfect soldier. You know what? I’m not. A perfect soldier follows orders, right, he just does, he doesn’t think, he only obeys. And that was never me. I want this. I want to fight and I’m willing to die for it. I know that. I know what I want. You better make sure you know what you want, too.”

“I know what I want, but I also know that what I want is not necessarily what I should do.”

“Don’t think so much of yourself. I’ve seen the graves, Dean. They’re unmarked. One of them must be my brother’s but I couldn’t tell you which, and there’s so many of them. There’s only one person who really matters in this world we live in and that’s John. The rest of us are interchangeable, disposable.”

Dean orders another drink for each of them, takes his time to think over all of what Derek’s just said. ‘“Dude, I have never heard you say so much at one time.”

Derek leans back and folds his arms over his chest. “I do that strong and silent thing pretty good, right?”

“Always worked on me.”

“Yeah, but you’re easy.”

Dean aims a kick at Derek’s shin, but Derek twists his legs away in time and Dean hits the wooden base of the booth instead. “Fuck,” he winces, “I think I broke my big toe,” and Derek laughs at him.

“That’s what you get, man. You Winchesters are all talk. It takes a Reese to get shit done.”

“Hey, hey, none of that. If we stayed here, we’d keep fighting. There’s gotta be work we can do with you and Sarah, right?”

Derek raises his glass. “We need all the help we can get.”

 

“Ok,” Dean calls out to Sam, when he gets back to the apartment, “you win.”

“What do I win?”

“We’ll stay here. But you owe me favors, man, infinite favors forever and ever.”

“I can live with that.” Sam’s sitting on the couch, and he puts aside the book he’d been reading as Dean nears. “What do you want? Tell me,” he says, dragging his hands up and down the backs of Dean’s thighs.

Dean leans over, whispers in Sam’s ear. “What I always want.” He pauses just long enough for Sam to be hanging on his next words. “To go to the farmer’s market.”

“You’re such a jerk.” Sam pulls Dean down onto his lap. “We can go tomorrow. We’ve got plenty of time, now.”

“I don’t know about that. J-Day could still be just around the corner.”

“Well, we’ve got more time than we did before, at least.”

“Yeah,” Dean echoes, draping an arm over Sam’s shoulders. “Plenty of time.”


End file.
